ABOVE: Microbiologist Erin Field (center) holds a shipwreck core that maritime archaeologist Nathan Richards (left) drilled from the hull of the Pappy Lane, while Field’s student Kyra Price holds a sterile bag for its collection.
JOHN MCCORD, UNC COASTAL STUDIES INSTITUTE
Armed with a battery-powered underwater drill, maritime archaeologist Nathan Richards ducked his face into the Atlantic Ocean. It was a sunny afternoon in September 2017, and Richards was standing in waist-deep water atop a wrecked ship called the Pappy Lane, which ran aground off the coast of North Carolina in the 1960s. With students looking on, Richards peered through his mask and skillfully applied pressure to push the 1.5-inch circular drill bit into the ship’s steel hull under his feet. As the director of maritime studies at East Carolina University (ECU), Richards had studied hundreds of shipwrecks over the years, and had even drilled core samples of some, but this ...
